Haircuts, Horseshoe Tavern, sleep trouble

-

I seem to be pouring more and more of my time into work. Voluntarily, mind, but it does seem like I have less of it for myself. Which, when I have it, is spent either doing chores, reading Slashdot or playing StarCraft. Yes, even in this day and age I find that game hmmm.. shall we say, satisfying? No, more like.. entertaining. Indulgent?

Saturday I did get quite a bit of sleep... some 15 hours worth, making me just in time to be late for a friend's birthday. Late, and a little dishevelled. Speaking of appearances, I'm to get a haircut tomorrow. I offered to allow someone to use my hair for practice. I hope I can stay awake! And by that I'm thinking of how I often fall asleep when I get my haircut. Mostly because of how warm those places tend to be, what with wearing that non-breathing apron and all that hot air. But also because I can't see worth a damn without my glasses so I pretty much keep them closed all the time anyway. Sleep just a sniff away.

Oh right.. the birthday. We ended up at the Horseshoe Tavern and caught a few live acts, the names of which escape me but I did have the presence of mind to snap a bit of video of the last act. However, I do not have the, er, will to actually import them right now. It's a huge kerfuffle wherein I have to get my phone, plug it in, wait for the transfer to complete, label the images, transfer them to the website, and write up the links. I guess it's not much more effort than me typing it up was, but anyway, it'll be done at some later date not yet determined.

Sunday was busy busy busy. Groceries, then catching Control [imdb.com] at the Cumberland. I really enjoyed it. I only had a vague idea of Ian Curtis' life, and the movie gives a, erm, depth? Dimension to the music that I can visualize now, and to some extent empathize with. Heavy, life-questioning stuff.

I had a few hours to kill before the other movie I was to see, the new Blade Runner "Final Cut", which did not add too much to what I'd already seen in the various other cuts. But it had been quite some time since I'd last watched it in a theatre and I'd forgotten how impressive, how eye-filling that opening sequence is, with that familiar, wailing Vangelis synthesizer. Ah, it was good.

I spent the time waiting for the showing by eating at Lick's (disappointing) and walking across Eglinton, then south on Mount Pleasant. They've urbanized that area quite a bit! It was however a rather car-speedy/pedestrian-lacking affair on a Sunday evening. I did stop in a Rexall to examine their over-sized chocolate bars, of which they had the 1 kg Dairy Milk bar for $15. I purchased a 100 g Toblerone to keep the dream alive.

These days my sleep is all awry, my mind waking up in the middle of the night, resolve never stronger than after the night it was never weaker. Days, weeks and now months have passed, yet I remain for the most part unchanged, unmoved, my life in a perpetual loop, as if it is unable to step out of the little energy well that has been laid before it. An investment must be made if I am to grow. When shall I look into the abyss?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

fifty is the number

-
I turned fifty last month. We had a small party with old faces, lots of laughs, and, at least for me, a reminder of the life I had before the pandemic, before having a kid, before my colon surgery . That is to say, a good time, and I hope to have many more like it. I do feel older, in practical, daily ways. For one thing my eyes have gotten much worse over the past year, so bad that I find myself looking over my glasses to look at my phone. My skin is just ravaged by this dry winter air, well beyond anything I'd ever experienced. A lifetime of neglect and sun-exposure has finally caught up to me. While I'm not exactly getting heavy I have noticed a softness building up around my torso. So over the past few months I've taken to doing modified burpees as my daily exercise and have been pretty happy with the results. I do them in small bursts, HIIT-style, and that seems about the pace I can afford, both on a time and energy level. I do try to play video games but I definitely ...
Read more

a return to the mood

-
Image
And yet life goes on. In June we had a short visit to Montreal, packing in the usual sights and flavours, tempered by the heat and our own waning energy levels. We took great advantage of the hotel's pool, swimming a joy I never tire of, encouraging Sora to get more comfortable in the water. I didn't have much opportunity to pick out my old haunts but I could see that the city has grown since my days there, shimmering halcyon days full of youth and opportunity. Indeed every moment on the streets would bring waves of memories, of friends faded or forgotten, my head lost and spinning and trying to breathe it all in again. Obviously very different now but seeing it anew through Sora's eyes gave some fresh pleasure. We made the trip to the recently updated Biosphere, probably the highlight of the trip, the biomes living up to their names. My heart shatters at the thought of our poor Ontario Science Centre being stripped of its wares, each precious exhibit cast out, the unique, ...
Read more

Dying, up close

-
In media people are portrayed as alert and cognizant right up to the moment they pass, able to give a final message to a loved one. Not so with my father, and I feel his death is more typical of the experience — a disinterest in watching or reading anything, increasingly jumbled speech, a loss of any appetite or thirst, just long periods of sleep. Finally a day or more of near-constant sleep, his heart beating slower and slower, until we turned away for a moment and he was gone. Though really he had been dying in varying degrees for weeks, his bodily performance a far cry from even a couple months before. It’s been over a month since the funeral  but the events leading up to it are still fresh in my mind, a history where my dad still lives, still has advice for me, still has smiles for his friends and family. My grief comes and goes, gradually trending to a melancholy, a deep sigh in my day. In truth I have been grieving these past few years as signs of my father’s end would appear...
Read more